Thursday, 28 August 2014

I have always been a storyteller. The idea of writing is part of my
DNA. I spent my young adulthood traveling the world and experiencing adventures
– some happy, some uncomfortable, and some downright terrifying. I learned to belly
dance on the roof of a bar in Turkey. I rode a camel across the Sahara. I
kissed an American soldier after crossing back through Checkpoint Charlie after
spending time in the Communist Block. I was kidnapped in Egypt by my taxi
driver. And while all of these adventures unfolded I thought, remember this for your books.

How long does it take you
to write a book?

When I write – the story is actually in my head beginning, middle
and end. If life is not distracting me, I can hammer out a first draft in about
three months. And then, I let it marinate for a month, so the flavors blend.
When I go back, I want to taste my story with a clean palate. That’s when the
real work begins.

What is your work schedule
like when you're writing?

I write always. I get up in the morning and do writerly things
before my morning chores and kids – things such as platform building, blog
writing, and research. I unschool my children during the day and transport them
to all of their activities – I’m on the lookout for interesting characters,
snippets of conversation, and plotting points that will feed my work. Every
free moment I’m at the computer. For me it’s not a section of time that I sit
down – writing is woven throughout my waking (and sometimes dreaming) hours. I
do like to find at least a few hours of quite to just go into the fictional
world and play.

How many crime novels have
you written?

I have written numerous short stories, four novels, some
non-fiction, and a novella. I do ghost writing and editing, as well.

Which is your favourite
and why?

All of my stories are my babies. I enjoy them all for different
reasons. They each have a unique voice and life to lead.

Where do you get your
ideas?

I get my ideas mostly from reading and doing. I like to try new
things and then I think, how could this
work in a story line? When I read, much of what I read is non-fiction.
Right now I’m reading a search and rescue manual about the application of
statistics to the behaviors of different ages/competencies/professions if they
were lost. So I’m sure someone is going to be lost soon in something I write.

Who is your favourite
character from your own work and why?My favorite character is Lexi Sobado. Lexi grew up unschooled –
unschooling is like homeschooling on steroids where everything and everybody is
an opportunity to learn. Now as an adult, Lexi needs to use her myriad
accomplishments to save her life and capture the bad guys. I used my oldest
daughter as her character template. Both my daughter and Lexi are bright, kind,
and very capable. The departure from reality comes in the strange circumstances
that Lexi finds herself.

Which character from the
work of others do you wish you’d invented

Mr. Darcy – I would love to create a character who touched the lives
of women for over two hundred years.

If you could have been
someone from history involved in crime (good or bad) who would that be and why?

If I could be anyone in history involved in a crime I think I would
like to be one of the resistance fighters in World War II

What are you working on
now?

I have a novel coming out at the end of October called Chaos Is Come Again, which I co-wrote
with author John Dolan. Chaos is Come
Again is a psychological suspense, a mystery, and a love story, packed with
gallows humor, and viewed through the lens of obsession. You’ve probably never
read anything like it.

I’m also
part of a project called Unlucky Seven.
New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors Diana Capri, Jamie Lee Scott, and
Tawny Stokes are joined by authors Hildie McQueen, Chief Scott Silverii, PhD,
Teresa Massey Watson and me on a collection of small town murder mystery
novellas. The collection is due out in November.

And as always, I write the blog ThrillWriting which is a writer’s resource blog, which is my gift to my fellow writers.

Bio

Canadian
born, Fiona Quinn is now rooted in the Old Dominion outside of D.C. with her
husband and four children. There, she unschools, pops chocolates, devours books,
and taps continuously on her laptop.

Tuesday, 26 August 2014

I’ve received quite a few emails recently asking when the fourth
D.I. Paolo Storey novel will be available. I’m delighted to announce the 28th of October has been set as the big day for Looking
for a Reason to be released by Crooked Cat Publishing.

It’s always exciting to be given a publication day to look
forward to – it means the hard work will be over and the celebrations can
begin.

There will, of course, be an online party with lots of
prizes on offer, with silly games, music and virtual food and drink to keep the
party spirit going.

A little after the online release, I’ll be hosting a real
life book launch party at The Bookshop, Sabinillas (date and time to be announced).
As soon as the date is set, I’ll be issuing a general invitation to come along
and have a glass (or two) of bubbly and some nibbles.

So, what is Looking
for a Reason about? For those of you who follow the D.I. Paolo Storey
series, you will know that Paolo’s cases are never straightforward. There are
always more suspects than one detective should have to cope with. The crimes,
too, are never as simple as they first appear. There are always twists that
turn clues into red herrings, suspects into victims and victims into suspects.

Looking for a Reason,
the fourth in the series, next in line after Bad Moon Rising
(a People’s Book Prize finalist), Someday Never Comes
(entered for a CWA Dagger award) and Call it Pretending
(released December 2013), gives Paolo even more headaches as nothing is quite
what it seems.

Someone is abducting men and subjecting them to three days
of rape and torture, but who? More to the point – why? After enduring cruelty,
starvation and water deprivation, they are released.

Paolo has lots of questions. Why three days? Why that
particular form of torture? Why deprive them of water? Why let them go?

The biggest question of all: Why will none of them talk
about their time in captivity, or give any information which would help the
police to find the perpetrator? The victims, to a man, refuse even to admit
they were held captive.

In addition to the above, Paolo’s personal and professional
lives are once again in turmoil.

Thursday, 14 August 2014

This
week we are fortunate to have a post from celebrated crime writer Louise
Phillips, author of The Doll’s House –
winner of the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Book of the Year 2013. In this post, she
gives an insight into the killer in her latest release, Last Kiss.

This
is the first time I’ve written a female fictional killer and she was harder to
write than I had first thought. I had no doubt when she began to form in my
mind that she was going to be a memorable character, because prior to starting Last Kiss, she had turned up in two
short stories. In the first time, she was a woman obsessed with her lover, who
finally kills him viciously in a crime of passion. The second time, she was in
a short story called ‘Role Play’, published in Revival Literary Magazine, where she appears at a hotel room to
meet an older and rather unpleasant lover.

It
took me a while to realise that she was the same fictional character, but when
I did, I knew she wasn’t going away. She had a bigger story to tell, and it was
up to me to do the telling. The early drafts of her narrative voice should have
come easily, but despite meeting her already, there was difficulty getting her
true internal voice. It was when I was away on holidays last year that I got
the first proper insight into how she would sound. I was lying on the beach and
even though the only paper I had to write on was a collection of napkins from a
nearby café, thankfully, I had a pen, and she kept on talking.

I
could describe her as a female Hannibal Lecter, although she doesn’t eat
people, not least not physically. She is
certainly dark, damaged and utterly capable of doing the most horrendous acts.

In Last Kiss we meet her at the age of
36. She has an obsession with the Tarot cards and lives a form of fractured
reality. Her online tag name is Cassie4Casanova,
and she has a series of doomed relationships with men. A keen interest in the
eye of the camera, she also takes self-portraits, not selfies, as she states, ‘she doesn’t
like to share’. Her murder scenes are recreations of the tarot cards, the
hangman, the hermit and the tower. She is capable of invading her lover’s
lives, including their partners, stalking, planning, waiting for her moment to
pounce. However, she too is a victim. As a baby she was taken from her mother
and raised in a house of evil.

You
don’t always know when you’re writing a fictional story how it will all turn
out, but very early on in the process, I realised her wickedness asked the age old question of nature
versus nurture, and which would win out, having the strongest influence.

This
fictional killer pushed my boundaries as a writer. I hope you agree she had a
story worth telling.

Red Ribbons, the bestselling debut novel by Dublin-born crime author Louise
Phillips, was nominated for the Ireland AM Crime Fiction Book of the Year award
at the BGE Irish Book Awards in 2012. Louise won the award in 2013 for her
second novel The Doll’s House. Louise
returned to writing in 2006, after raising her family. In addition to her three
published novels, Louise’s work has been published as part of various anthologies
and literary journals. She has won the Jonathan Swift Award, was a winner in
the Irish Writers’ Centre Lonely Voice platform, and her writing has been
shortlisted for prizes such as the Molly Keane Memorial Award and Bridport UK. Last Kiss is her third novel and she is
currently working on her fourth.